{"id":436688,"date":"2025-09-19T18:29:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T18:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/436688\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T18:29:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T18:29:14","slug":"judge-strikes-down-trumps-15bn-lawsuit-against-the-new-york-times-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/436688\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge strikes down Trump\u2019s $15bn lawsuit against the New York Times | Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge tossed Donald Trump\u2019s $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times<\/a>, book publisher Penguin and two Times reporters, and said the suit was filled with \u201cvituperation and invective\u201d and violated civil procedure in federal cases for failing to get to the point.<\/p>\n

US district court judge Steven Merryday in Florida will allow the president to refile and amend the action within 28 days, however.<\/p>\n

Merryday cited<\/a> Rule 8(a) of the federal rules of civil procedure requiring a complaint include a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief to disqualify the filing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlleging only two simple counts of defamation, the complaint consumes eighty-five pages,\u201d Merryday wrote. \u201cCount I appears on page eighty, and Count II appears on page eighty-three \u2026 Even under the most generous and lenient application of Rule 8, the complaint is decidedly improper and impermissible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Merryday noted the \u201cmany, often repetitive, and laudatory (toward President Trump) but superfluous allegations,\u201d and \u201cmuch more, persistently alleged in abundant, florid, and enervating detail\u201d.<\/p>\n

The judge\u2019s order does not address the truth of the allegations nor the validity of the claims, but said \u201ca complaint remains an improper and impermissible place for the tedious and burdensome aggregation of prospective evidence, for the rehearsal of tendentious arguments, or for the protracted recitation and explanation of legal authority putatively supporting the pleader\u2019s claim for relief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump launched<\/a> the lawsuit earlier this week accusing the major US news publication and Penguin of being a \u201cmouthpiece\u201d for the Democratic party and of \u201cspreading false and defamatory content\u201d about him.<\/p>\n

His suit, filed on Monday in federal court in Florida, focuses on the publication of a set of news articles in the New York Times describing his work on the television show The Apprentice and stories derived from the book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump<\/a> Squandered His Father\u2019s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, by the New York Times reporters Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner.<\/p>\n

The suit argues that the description of Trump as having been \u201cdiscovered\u201d as a potential host for the show is factually incorrect because Trump had long been famous before the show began. It also argues that reporting in the book described Trump\u2019s multimillion-dollar inheritance from his father Fred C Trump as a product of \u201cfraudulent tax evasion schemes\u201d, and that Trump\u2019s father had been \u201ctwisting the rules\u201d of federal programs used to support returning second world war veterans to build his fortune.<\/p>\n

Other complaints Trump alleges are false and defamatory in the suit include the Times\u2019s reporting on Trump\u2019s conduct in school, the value of his real estate deals and that he had been investigated for ties to the mafia and money laundering.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Times has betrayed the journalistic ideals of honesty, objectivity, and accuracy that it once professed,\u201d it states, also accusing the Times of being \u201ca leading, and unapologetic, purveyor of falsehoods against President Trump\u201d.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the New York Times said: \u201cThis lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favour and stand up for journalists\u2019 first amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reuters contributed reporting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge tossed Donald Trump\u2019s $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, book publisher Penguin and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-436688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115232385604549545","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}